


His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin

by EssayOfThoughts



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Murder, i guess, ruminations on death, valonqar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 03:02:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9052594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: “Jaime,” she had whispered, like a blaspheming prayer, but he has blasphemed with her name, in her name before.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tywinning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tywinning/gifts).



> Because you regularly write wonderful, incredibly inspiring meta, and _I'm not even in this fandom, damnit._

This is the way of death: everything bright gone dull.

 

* * *

 

Jaime stands at the balcony and watches the sun rise. In a short stretch of time golden light will spill over golden stone and illuminate a golden bed and the woman lying on it.

At his side his golden hand hangs heavy.

 

* * *

 

Last night the room had been lit with candles, light shimmering off the gold bedstead, gold mirror, gold-veined stone. Bright and shimmer-shining, like Cersei’s bright smile.

There was much between them, these days, that had never lain between them before. They were twins, one soul cleaved in two, one body split apart, made to be matching opposites of all they each had needed.

Somehow, over these last spread of years, as the seasons had turned and brought treason forth, they had split so far apart, created so great a gulf, it felt almost as though they were not twins these days.

 

* * *

 

The light flickers over the waters and towards the Rock. It has been so long since Jaime has been here - been  _ home _ \- and he had almost forgot the smell of the ocean, here, the way the winds whip about him.

But it hasn’t changed.

 

* * *

 

The candlelight had flickered over his skin last night, over the metal of his hand. It had flickered over Cersei’s hair, too - still shorn short - and made her eyes shine as bright as peridot and emerald.

(they do not shine, now, and the room is dark)

 

* * *

 

The light of the sun is cold and almost bleak. Wan as a sick servant. It is not as piercingly bleak, almost silver-as-snow, as it is up north, it is not as starkly colder-but-golder as it is farther south. Here, in the west, it is a sad wan thing, like him, bereft of that which made it warm.

(he has killed the thing which made him warm)

 

* * *

 

“Jaime,” she had whispered, like a blaspheming prayer, but he has blasphemed with her name,  _ in _ her name before.

 

* * *

 

The light picks its way up the Rock, over the paws and cavernous harbour entrance, unable to truly penetrate its depths.

 

* * *

 

Their skin was golden, their hair, the room. Lannister through and through and through.

Even his false hand was golden as though that show of wealth might make up for his loss.

 

* * *

 

He can hear the servants moving outside, softly, knows that, far away, throughout the rock, the guards are changing their watch.

(he knows that none of this will stop Tyrion, if he comes south with his dragon)

 

* * *

 

Was it vengeance that had pressed his hand against her throat? Was it hate or love or betrayal? Was it necessity, the knowledge that his sister was so power-mad that she would never stop, never cede the Rock, would see it destroyed first? 

Maybe, maybe it was simply him, pressing his metal hand to his sister’s throat so he would not feel her breathe her last.

 

* * *

 

The sunlight hits his face but barely penetrates the room. The shutters are closed, his shoulders block the doorway.

(on the bed his sister’s body is dull and dim and  _ dead _ )

He is not sure he knows what he has done.

 

* * *

 

Jaime is a shade of himself, almost a true shade, when Tyrion arrives. He hasn’t moved from the balcony. The room reeks of decay.

“You did it,” Tyrion says, surprised. “You killed her.”

Jaime’s face, when he turns to look at him, is as dead as any of the wights he has helped to kill. 

Jaime says nothing, just looks at him with dead eyes in a dead face, like a hanged man and he falls.

 

* * *

 

The white cloak tumbles down and is stained with red blood. When it stills against the rock of the paw, golden armour and golden hand shimmer.

Gold and red, plastered over white, plastered over the still more golden stone of the Rock.

The Rock will stand on, eternal.

  
  


* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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